Mr. Kempthorne Goes to Washington.

Mr. Bush has advanced Idaho's governor, Dirk Kempthorne, as his nominee for Secretary of the Interior. "What has that got to do with me?", you ask the wind. Not much, except for the level of shenanigans that the whole process reveals.

It seems that when the high and mighty get together to be fabulous, they like to see who's bigger. Poor Mr. Kempthorne seems to be something of a guppy swimming in the shark tank, but that's beside the point. What is instructive is how his financial business is massaged in a manner that would most likely have you or me sitting in a small, rather shabbily furnished cell with a room mate named Moe. According to a Salt Lake Tribune article http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3794946, Mr. Kempthorne has a net worth somewhere between $36,000 and $345,000. Hey, what's $300,000 between friends, right? I mean, once you get past three or four zeros, they get hard to keep track of.

Never mind those zeros, though. We've got plenty more fun where that came from. See, Mr. Kempthorne has a bit of land, 14 acres of it, up in Valley County in Idaho. This is commonly known as God's country, rather picturesque with its mountains and reservoirs and tall trees and rivers and scenic views and such. This 14 acres is valued somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 to $250,000. That's all well and good. Property values can fluctuate a bit, what with skittish investors and bankers. What's interesting is the minutia. Prior to a tax loophole being repaired this year, Mr. Kempthorne's land was valued at $1000, as "agriculturally exempt land". Dang if those zeros don't keep popping up. It was during this aforementioned loophole period that Mr. Kempthorne seemed to be having trouble settling his tax burden. He got a bit in arrears, and was two months late paying the first half of his $19.46 tax bill.

Right. Twenty bucks. Two months. Maybe it's because it's such a small amount that it got overlooked? Sure, that's the ticket! When you've got so many zeros caroming around the room, one or two of them can get lost in the crowd. Maybe we give our governors too much to have to do in any given week to be able to keep up with all the personal bookwork. But isn't that why they have accountants?

Hang on, we're in the home stretch. Mr. Kempthorne, sartorial genius that he is, is also wont to enjoy the services of a quality barber. As such, it would appear that he let a few more of those pesky zeros get away from him, bouncing a couple checks in the direction of his hairdresser in October of 2004 and May of 2005 for $76 and $35 respectively. I would have to question whether the governor is getting his money's worth out of a 35 or 76 dollar haircut. He doesn't seem to have enough growth to warrant 76 dollar's worth of attention. Maybe that's the point, the less one has, the more one needs to spend.

This, however brings us to a rather troubling fork in the road. If one is given to being a trifle too lax with one's own personal funds, how can one be expected to be responsible with the publics money? This seems to be how all excessive government spending takes hold, and it grows exponentially from there. Being off by a few thousand dollars is nothing compared to the billions that will be at his disposal as a cabinet level director. I would posit that it's well past time that you and I began holding all these sultans and poobahs accountable for how deeply they are spending you and me and future generations into debt that can never be hoped to be repaid. All those zeros have a way of adding up in the end.